The Restoration

One of the fundamental beliefs of our faith is that Jesus Christ's church has been restored.

 res·to·ra·tion

/ˌrɛstəˈreɪʃən/ Show Spelled[res-tuh-rey-shuhn] (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/restoration)

–noun

1. the act of restoring; renewal, revival, or reestablishment.

2. the state or fact of being restored.

3. a return of something to a former, original, normal, or unimpaired condition.



Jesus gave authority to his apostles



I love the third definition here, as it states the return of something that was to its original condition, not making or transforming to something completely new. God loves each of us here on earth, we are his children. Since the beginning of time he has reached out in love to all of us by calling prophets.  The prophets teach of Christ, his gospel, the one true way back to him, but people have repeatedly chosen to reject them. 2,000 years ago Jesus Christ himself came, established his church by calling the apostles, giving them the priesthood.(The power to act in his name) Remarkably people even rejected Him. Through his suffering in the Garden, his death on the cross, he provided the way for us to be clean from sin, return to live with our father again if we would follow his gospel. At the death of Christ and his apostles, the priesthood, power to act in Christ name was lost. The power to baptize and preform other ordinances of salvation was no longer on the earth. We entered into an apostasy, or in other words there was no one on earth that held the priesthood, Christs church was lost. People relied on their own wisdom to teach the gospel.God knew that this would happen. He prepared the way for his gospel and the priesthood to be restored by calling another prophet in this day and age. His name was Joseph Smith. As he grew up, he had many question about which church was true. He read James 1:5, and deiced that he must ask God himself or remain in darkness and confusion. In the spring of 1820, he retired to a grove of trees near his home, and prayed to God to know which church was true. In his own words, he said "I saw a pillar of light, exactly over my head, above the brightness of the sun, which descended gradually until it fell upon me. When the light rested upon me I saw two personages, whose glory and brightness defy all description, standing above me in the air. One of them spoke to me, calling me by name, and said, "Joseph, this is my beloved Son, hear him." He was chosen by God to bring back Christs original church to the earth. Knowing that doubt and misinformation would still exist on the earth, our father provided a way for us to know for our self the truth of this message. The Book of Mormon is convincing evidence that Joseph was a prophet, that Jesus is the Christ. It is a book of scripture comparable to the bible, a second witness from this continent of America. To know the truth, one has to first read the book. Second, ask God in prayer, having faith you will get an answer, really intending to act on the answer received. Then he will answer "by the power of the holy ghost, and by the power of the holy ghost you may know the truth of all things."(Moroni 10:3-5)